Dear daddy: Margaret Kenyatta’s letters to Jomo in jail

 Kenya's founding President Jomo   Kenyatta

When she was born at Pumwani in 1928, his father was leaving for England and therefore just sent her mother “greetings and bananas.”

She went on to become the first black and third woman mayor of Nairobi. It was during her tenure that the city council built housing estates like Buruburu.

Margaret Kenyatta’s six-year tenure ended in 1976.

Her father, President Jomo Kenyatta, appointed her Kenya’s permanent representative to the UNEP until 1987.

Entry into politics and later diplomacy wasn’t a fluke, as she was part of her father’s political evolution, even when the old lion was detained in Lokitaung with Paul Ngei, Bildad Kaggia, Kung’u Karumba and Fred Kubai.

Achieng’ Oneko didn’t finish the seven years hard labour sentence as lack of enough evidence got him spirited to Manda Island Prison instead. Anyway, while in detention, Margaret Kenyatta ensured his dad received medication for eczema and vital vitamin tablets as Kenyatta never trusted a colonial government’s doctor for fear of being poisoned.

Kenyatta got news of Kenya and his family via letters from Margaret, then living in Nairobi with an Asian bookbinder who supported African nationalism. Because letters were censored, politics was avoided. Jeremy Murray-Brown, Kenyatta’s biographer, informs us that Margaret, the alumnus of Alliance High when it was a mixed school, also received letters from Paul Ngei, who hated Lokitaung as it lacked “women, alcohol and cigarettes.”

Ngei, who had been expelled from Makerere University after stabbing another student over a woman, was the youngest of the ‘Kapenguria Six’ at 29. The hot blood’s letters got mixed up and one written to Margaret in flowery language “full of neat Kiswahili phrases,” notes Murray-Brown, ended in Kenyatta’s hands, making him wonder why Ngei was trying to be a son-in-law behind his back in prison!

 Jomo Kenyatta with his daughter, Miss Margaret Kenyatta 1972

That didn’t stop Ngei from writing to Margaret how he was arrested: “Sister, every one of my friends here nearly passed out when I told them the story!”

One of Kenyatta’s letters to Margaret narrated how Kariuki Chotara, then transferred to Lokitaung for murder, was incited by fellow inmates to kill him, but the knife attack was thwarted by General China, whom Kenyatta was teaching English, meaning Lokitaung Prison had eight inmates!

Kenyatta wrote to Margaret: “Envy and hatred had no mercy...although the attack was planned secretly and craftily, it didn’t achieve its aim.”

The letters ended with, “I am your loving father, J.K.”